Once in a while you will stumble upon the truth but most of us manage to pick ourselves up and hurry along as if nothing had happened. – Winston Churchill

Start where you are, create a shared and visual understanding of flow of work and then evolutionary improve. In short; this is the Kanban Method.

With the Kanban Method you have a proven approach for moving towards your state of excellence.

Start where you are

The Kanban Method builds on both small and large organizations current strengths; including current roles and processes. It acts as a catalyst for evolutionary change towards excellence – it’s a method for introducing a continuous improvement (kaizen) culture. It is proven approach for knowledge worker organizations to go Lean.

Create a shared and visual understanding

The starting point is a shared and visual understanding of the current flow of work. To create a shared understanding of the inherently invisible flow of knowledge work it has to be made visible. The saying; “a picture is worth more than thousand words” really applies when it comes to understand the flow of knowledge work. To even further deepen your understanding of the flow of work a pull system is established by limiting the work-in-process. Contrary to common reflexes, the technique of limiting the work-in-process usually has the added benefits of improving the flow and reducing stress.

Evolutionary improve

With a shared understanding of the flow of work the Kanban Method encourages small evolutionary changes, changes towards a state of excellence. The method encourages the knowledge worker to apply a scientific approach and run experiments to strive towards excellence. The method itself does not define the state of excellence or the specific improvement method to use. The state of excellent has to be defined based on the organizations context and business philosophy.

Common models used to move towards excellence are; The Theory of Constraints, The System of Profound Knowledge and Lean Economic Model. And common improvement methods used are; Improvement Kata/Coaching Kata and A3 Thinking.